Pudsey is named as a UK housing hotspot as prices surge

PUDSEY HAS been named as one of the country’s property hotspots, in new research published today.

Figures published by Lloyds Bank showed house prices in Pudsey had risen by 51 per cent compared with 2013 - this was the third highest location in the country.

Only Daventry and Alfreton in the East Midlands saw bigger increases.

In the first ten months of 2014 the number of house sales nationally was 21 per cent higher than in 2013. In Yorkshire it was 23 per cent.

Around 760,000 sales took place across the country between January and October, marking a 21 per cent increase on the same period in 2013.

A separate report published today by property analyst Hometrack suggests Leeds is well placed to see house price rises increase in future years.

This is because many Northern cities have only recently seen house prices start to rise in the last two or three years while in the South it has been ongoing for five or six years.

Hometrack said today that the strong property price growth, which has already been seen in cities such as London and Oxford since 2009, will restrict the ability of values to increase further in these cities in the future.

Average property prices in both these areas are now more than 12 times local annual earnings, which is almost double the UK average of 6.3 times.

Hometrack’s analysis shows that the housing markets in many of the UK’s main cities, including London, Aberdeen, Cambridge, Oxford, Cardiff, Manchester and Birmingham, all reached a trough around six years ago, after which time prices started to recover.

By contrast, property prices in Leeds have only been increasing for the past two years. The cities which only started their housing market recovery a couple of years ago tend to have house prices which are more affordable when compared with earnings, averaging between three and six times local wages, said Hometrack.

This could give prices more wriggle-room to push up further in the North in cities like Leeds.

The average property price in London has piled £144,278 onto its value to reach £405,500 since the market in the capital bottomed out in April 2009.